Monday December 29th

I had a vivid dream last night – I dreamed that I gave Deborah and Claire their presents and also an incredibly vivid dream where I was being chased by West Indians in cars – it sounds ludicrous written in the cold light of day but at the time it was quite horrible – it ended up around the Main Library with people on fire and the hunted in the car (no longer me) being ambushed and riddled with bullets.

I got up at nine along with everyone else – Robert and Carol wanted to go early – and this they duly did just after ten o’clock. They were going home to drop off presents before thrashing across to Hull for the New Year. They seem to have enjoyed Christmas, which has been mainly a television watching, canned beer affair.

Andrew and I were going to go into Easterby but beforehand Andrew helped Dad ferry rubbish across to Shawridge-Lane dump. The, unbeknown to me, he ran him into Easterby. I had to go on the bus.

The journey took ages, and especially after Howden Road, the volume of traffic was incredible. Eventually however, almost on the stroke of midday the ‘bus pulled into Holdsworth Station.

I went immediately to Smiths, where I looked all round the book department, browsing through travel, astronomy, soccer, history and natural history books – I bought Dad a paperback about Glencoe for his birthday costing £1.25p.

Upstairs in the record department (good reductions on albums) I met Andrew, who bought two jazz albums by Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck. (I was surprised to see, on the Smiths chart hoarding, that three Lennon singles are in the top ten – “Imagine” at No. 9, “Happy Christmas, War is over” at 4, and “Starting over” at 2).

In HMV, (I hadn’t intended doing) I bought an album – Joni Mitchell’s “Mingus” album, my twenty-third LP, the fourteenth of 1980. Some albums just ooze class, and this is one of them – it’ll take a while to really “get into” but I know I’m going to love it (the second side is the best, especially “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”). It cost me £3.99, and my true purpose for coming into Easterby (to buy school equipment) went out of the window.

We got home at three o’clock and spent the afternoon playing records – I really like Andrew’s Charlie Parker album.

Today, the Shuttle, plus SRBs and ET were rolled out at Cape Canaveral – scheduled launch date March 14th 1981, ‘though it’ll probably be late March-early April. Also, there was film of idiot Reagan calling the Iranians “barbarians” for demanding their rightful £10 000 million still in the USA. I detest the goon, and 1981 should be a real catalogue of classic mistakes, amusing if they aren’t so catastrophic.